Nine decades later, neighborhoods are filled with Victorians, Queen Armes,
ramblers, I-houses and mansions. But there is still a place of craftsman-style
bungalows.

And bungalows are
back. New developments are filled with row upon row of houses with wide
porches, lowhanging eaves and sturdy porch columns.

"It's basically
a trend that's coming back in," said Steve Jensen, owner of a construction
company that built a new development in Tacoma, Wash., filled with $350,000
homes with bungalow shape and craftsman touches. "We've kind of modified it to
the new market;" Jensen said, referring to the spacious kitchens and vaulted
ceilings you'd never find in a true bungalow.

Enthusiasm for
bungalow homes became a mania in the 1910s and `20s. Even the word was new,
exciting and fashionable - bungalow.

It's a corrupt
form of a Bengali word, and the design for bungalows came from India, where
houses with wide, wraparound porches were popular with the British army.

Bungalows first
took hold in Southern California, where they were built with open sleeping
porches and sometimes with canvas walls to make "tent bungalows." You don't
have to go to Los Angeles to see the bungalows there - just rent movies shot in
L.A., such as "L.A. Confidential" and "Devil in a Blue Dress:"

They spread throughout the country and the world. Vancouver, British Columbia,
has a huge number of bungalows, as does Australia.

Architectural
historians believe bungalows came along at a time the nation was filled with
"self-confidence and chauvinistic pride," said author John Milnes Baker. The
American way of life was touted as informal, healthy, wholesome. Americans
wanted homes that reflected that life.

"It's a more casual home style and a more comfortable lifestyle," said
Elizabeth Anderson, Tacoma's historic preservation officer, of the simplified
bungalows that fill Tacoma and its environs.

"It flows. It's not like a hall-and-parlor house where it's rather controlled
-there's the entry into the stairs from the hall, the entry into the parlor
from the hall. This bungalow style does exemplify a social style which is less
formal:"

But even better, the bungalow met high ideals. Gustav Stickley, the
original designer of craftsman homes and furniture, wrote that he wanted his
home designs "to substitute the luxury of taste for the luxury of costliness;
to teach that beauty does not imply elaboration or ornament; to employ only
those forms and materials which make for simplicity, individuality and dignity
of effect."

Bungalows united simplicity and artistry, and they were one of the
first home styles that seemed truly American.